Theuderic said:
I still fail to see why China or Japan would have any effect in this. Are they more prone to racism and if so please cite a few concrete examples.
From 1616 until the arival of Commodore Perry, the Tokugawa Shogunate ordered the closure of all of Japan to foreigners, with the exception of one city (IIRC Shimoneseki). Any foreigner found anywhere else in Japan was summarily put to death, no exceptions. The US confronted Japan in the 1850's because US sailors who were
shipwrecked were being put to death. That may not be racist, but it's xenophobic for sure.
China was traditionally called
chung kuo which means "the middle kingdom" or in other words, "the centre of the world". Traditional China may not have been racist, but it was phenomenally elitist. In the nineteenth century, even after having lost the two Opium wars with Britain and having been forced into humiliating treaties with numerous European powers, the CHinese Imperial court still refused to meet with ambassadors from Europe because they were inferior barbarians. THe Empress dowager virtually made the march on Peking inevitable by refusing to protect foreigners from the Boxer Rebels.
Neither of these cultures was any more racist than European powers of their day, but, compared to modern times, they were exceptionally racist, xenophobic and elitist.
Important NOte: None of the above comments refer to contemporary China or Japan in any way. Moreover, no position is stated or implied with regards to Chinese or Japanese people.
With regards to the original question;
We have a xenophobic samurai elven culture in our campaign, but at this stage it hasn't progressed much further than a few hostile encounters at sea. In terms of gods, perhaps the elves don't worship deities in the conventional sense, but follow a more shinto concept, where there are spirit's everywhere. Each elven cleric might have their own personal god, for example.
